Report 733
Report #733 Skillset: Discernment Skill: Assessing Org: Serenguard Status: Completed Dec 2011 Furies' Decision: We will investigate implementing Solution 1. Problem: At the moment, the skills "contemplate" and "discern" do require full- balance, but consume neither balance nor equilibrium. These skills are very much important to guardian and mage classes in that they allow them to keep track of their progress on getting their opponents into insta-kill range. Assess is quite useful to warriors and monks in knowing the precise wounding status of their opponents, but it utilizes equilibrium. This skill aims to remove the disparity between this skill, contemplate and discern, by removing the equilibrium cost. 0 R: 0 Solution #1: Similar to contemplate and discern, remove the equilibrium cost from assessing and make it a free skill that requires balance to perform. Player Comments: ---on 12/4 @ 18:46 writes: I agree with this report. I've always been annoyed at the disparity and think it's a good change. ---on 12/5 @ 16:14 writes: I don't feel there is a disparity, warrior afflictions allow for tracking of wound levels with pretty good accuracy, knowing exact levels wouldn't really be a large boost on top of that. Discern/Contemplate is for things that don't give different messages which allow tracking, IE, if I haegl you, I get the same line whether you are at 100% mana, or 0% mana, if you are a PB and getting tendons on strikes pretty much every hit, you're probably at crit wounds. ---on 12/6 @ 01:16 writes: Warrior afflictions being random as they are you don't truly know anything. I've seen puis assaults not trigger an affliction which leaves you with no information. It's true over time that you can figure it out through repeated hits but I don't see anything wrong with making assess instant. It should have a mana cost to prevent spamming it as discern and contemplate do. ---on 12/6 @ 15:09 writes: When I was a warrior, I had both my affs highlighted and them applying highlighted so I could see them curing wounds, even if the RNG screws you, you still hit with a puis assault and paying attention to applies, gives you a pretty good guess at where their wound levels are. The RNG isn't really much of a factor. It really isn't that difficult, nor is it really important to know exact levels. All you really need to know is general levels. If the admin want to change it, then so be it, I just feel it's extraneous and takes away the challenging part of warriors and make them more 'automatic' ---on 12/6 @ 20:28 writes: Like Sidd, I track affs and applies and use them to estimate wounding levels on the fly. With some experience it is for the most part a reliable method, however its reliability fails somewhat when considering limbs, and as Wobou has said, even puissant attacks can not trigger any affs. In any case, the increased clarity this change would bring would be welcome and help new warriors over the initial hurdle of warrior combat complexity. I agree with Wobou in that it should have a small mana cost like discern/contemplate. ---on 12/7 @ 19:33 writes: @wobou: Imperfect information is not the same as no information. Sidd and Ushaara are able to figure in their heads about how many wounds a target probably has, and I imagine that if I were to switch classes to becoe a warrior, I would learn to do the same. Even if you aren't comfortable with doing that sort of on-the-fly calculation in your head, writing a script to do realtime bayesian analysis to provide the same information would be interesting intellectual exercise, but not terribly difficut for an experienced coder. Probably a reasonable market for a plugin like that, too. ---on 12/7 @ 22:08 writes: @Sidd if it wouldn't be a large boost then there's little reason to argue against the report. Also, using your own suggested comparison, you can contemplate right before every haegl to know with reasonable certainty where their mana will be afterwards. Does this mean someone going for a mana kill doesn't really need contemplate or discern either? ---on 12/7 @ 23:07 writes: Ushaara and Sidd do make the good point that warrior afflictions give an estimation of wound states. However, tracking of wound curing across multiple body parts, especially given a myriad of skills and specific situations, is quite sloppy and not altogether feasible. You can also never truly know how much you do on a particular person per hit with the uneven distribution of armour stats. There's also the fact that occasionally you just have "bad luck" and never proc an aff at that wound level, despite being well in there. Truthfully, I see this being used by more experienced warriors to aid in figuring out people's curing methods and taking advantage of it. It still requires a great deal of knowledge and good decision making on the part of the player, and does nothing more than increase some transparency in combat. Given that you said yourself, Sidd, that it would not do much to help warriors (which I disagree with somewhat), I don't see why you would reject the notion of the report. You say it isn't necessary, and I say I see absolutely no reason why assess should still consume equilibrium. ---on 12/7 @ 23:26 writes: I'd like to note, in case it isn't obvious, that I -do- support this report. All it does is reduce the coding overhead and learning curve for warrior combat without unbalancing anything or consuming undue admin resources. It's pretty much exactly the sort of thing I want in an ease of use report. ---on 12/7 @ 23:38 writes: @Ixion lets check what you just said, "you can contemplate right before every haegl to know with ---on 12/7 @ 23:38 writes: Reasonable certainty where their mana will be afterwards." I wouldn't know at all what their mana was at without first contemplating or discerning. So you're comparision falls kind of flat in that it requires contemplate to work in the first place. I just don't think there is a disparity between contemplate/discern and assess for the reasons I have stated. I really think the joy of warrior is the mindgame of paying attention to wounding levels and avoiding stance/parry and I feel this would take away from that and just make it 'automatic,' which is a part of druidry I'm not liking. Automatic meaning that you write a script that decides where to strike based on targets wounding levels (which also makes it easy to guess what's being stanced/parried). I'm not really against the report for anything other than that. ---on 12/16 @ 20:32 writes: I agree with Sidd that you can reasonably guess what wound levels enemies are at, but I also don't have any strong objections to this report. As similar report with assay (report 22) was done years ago though, to help give reference ---on 12/22 @ 02:18 writes: I find making assay instant very different f rom making assess instant. Parry and stance is the balancing force of warriors so bypassing that (which an instant assay would let you do) is much more significant than getting your opponents wounding state more readily. Also in terms of systems that try to track wound levels, going off affs isn't reliable but works, going off of trying to catch applies is very easily defeated as you don't know if they are applying health or a salve, it's just that most people don't bother to do that. ---on 12/22 @ 15:26 writes: Knowing what level certain limbs wounds are at gives a pretty good guess as to what's being parried and stanced. Tracking wound levels is a lot easier than you guys are trying to make it out to be. I never used a system to track wounding, I used highlights to point out stuff, and kept track in my head. If I wasn't building wounds, it was obvious, if I was destroying certain limbs, it was obvious, if I was slowly building over time, it was obvious. All you need to do is pay attention, and you will know reliably what wound levels you have built up, it's not about seeing one aff, it's about watching the whole fight and paying attention to each strike or swing.